What Kairos does by itself

Unusual use

How Kairos notices a session using far more CPU, memory, disk or network than usual, or the Mac short of disk or memory, asks the sessions behind it to act, and watches what they answer and whether the use comes down.

Kairos notices when a session uses far more than it usually does, or the Mac runs short of disk or memory. It asks the sessions behind it to act, then watches what they answer and whether the use comes down. It uses only what Kairos already records for Charts; nothing is measured again.

Turn it off in Settings › Sessions › Ask sessions about unusual use: "Kairos asks a session using far more than usual to clean up, and shows its reply." With it off, nothing is looked for or sent. See Settings › Sessions.

What counts as unusual

For each session: its CPU, memory, disk writes and network use.

Now is the last 10 minutes (with at least 6 of those minutes high, so a blip is not a spike), the last hour, and the last day.
Usual is the session's own 6 hours before, its day before and its week before. Use is unusual at 3 times every usual that has enough history, and above a floor (for example 2 GB of disk writes in 10 minutes, or 50 GB in a day).
A session with too little history of its own is compared with the other sessions.
A session's day is also compared with the other sessions at 5 times theirs, so one that writes 180 GB every day stands out though it does so daily.
A memory jump: a session's memory 1 GB above its usual at any minute of the last 10 while the Mac was short of memory, however briefly, with the commands that held it then.

For the Mac:

Disk: free space falling far faster than usual, due to reach its floor (10 GB, or 2% of the disk if more) within 6 hours at the last hour's pace, or already below it.
Memory: memory pressure at warning or worse for 10 minutes with the swap files over 80% full.

Each names the sessions that wrote the most, or hold the most memory. When no session did, it names the apps outside the sessions that did (Docker, a browser), or says something else on the Mac is using it, and asks no one.

What Kairos asks

Each unusual use asks its session once: the numbers, the usual it broke, and what to do:

for disk writes, free what the session created and can regenerate (scratch and temp files, test outputs, build caches, downloads, virtual environments) and stop what it no longer needs;
for CPU, memory or network, stop what it started and no longer needs;
always keep uncommitted or unpushed work and anything you made, and never stop Docker or prune its images or volumes.

It asks for a one-line reply that starts with "Kairos" and the ask's code, so Kairos can find it. The same use is not asked about again for 6 hours unless it gets three times worse, and a session asked about one thing is not asked about another for half an hour.

While the Mac's disk is low, Kairos also measures the temp folder each session's tool keeps for it alone, and asks a session holding a large share to delete what it no longer needs there.

Watching the answer

Kairos does not assume a session read its message: it watches.

It says	Meaning
Kairos asked it at 14:20; waiting for it to read it	Sent.
…; the message has not reached it yet (a session in another permission mode waits for you to let it in)	Not seen after 15 minutes. See Deliver without approval in Settings › Sessions.
…; it has the message, no reply yet	Seen. After half an hour without a reply, it is asked once more.
…; it is answering	Replying now.
…; it answered at 14:31: "…"	Its reply, quoted.
…, and again at 14:50; it has not replied	No answer to the reminder either: an alert.
Kairos could not reach it: its tool does not take messages	Codex, or a tool like it.
… Back to normal since 15:02, 18 GB freed	The use came down; for disk, the space freed since the ask.

Where you see it

As moments on Today and in the Mac's notifications, opening Sessions:

Title	Level
work-app: disk writes 12x its usual	A glance; an alert when the session does not answer, cannot be reached, or the Mac is critical.
work-app: disk writes far above the other sessions	The same.
work-app: memory jumped to 4.6 GB	An alert, until it answers or is back to normal; a glance once it was asked about its memory.
work-app holds 9 GB in its temp folder	A glance, unless it does not answer.
Disk filling / Disk low	The Mac's own; an alert when critical. Opens Hardware at Disk.
Memory short	The Mac's own; an alert once it lasts half an hour. Opens Hardware at Memory.

The session's row in Sessions carries the alert too. Muting: Unusual use in Settings › Alerts. Each ask stays among the moments for 6 hours after it settles, and in the record for a week.

Review after the answer (2.0.69)

Placeholder. This section describes behaviour that arrives with 2.0.69 and is written once that code lands. Until then, this page describes what ships today.